Volume VII - Modernist Magazines Project

By Ella D'Arcy 315and the little beast rolled over dead. He took it up, and lookedat it curiously. He smoothed with his fingers its warm, velvetycoat. He was sorry he had killed it. A second ago it had beenenjoying the sunshine, the warm air, its own sense of well-being.And now it was utterly destroyed, utterly annihilated, and no onecould restore to it the life which he had wantonly taken.The thought of Shergold, always present at the back of hismind, pressed forward imperatively. Shergold had not believed insoul or immortality. He had believed that with death the life ofa man comes to an end, just as does the life of a mouse. LeMesurier had often listened, perforce, to his dogmatising on suchviews to Lily ; to his proclaiming that each individual life is but aflash of light between two eternities of darkness ; that just as thebody returns to the elements from which it came, so the spirit isreabsorbed into the forces and energies which move the world.And because Shergold had no belief in another life, he had set animmense value upon this one. In his self-engrossed, pedantic way,he had thoroughly enjoyed every hour, every moment of it. Supposinghis views were true, then the greatest injury one couldinflict on such a man would be to deprive him of this life whichhe prized, suddenly to extinguish him like a candle, to annihilatehim like this poor little mole.'He laid the body of the mole down upon the turf, and walkedaway. He no longer sang or whistle4 to himself. The monotonousdays seemed intolerably long.IllThree months had gone by. Le Mesurier, in the solitude ofLe Tas, had suffered every pang a guilty conscience can inflict,had been through every phase of remorse and of despair.The